It is evident, therefore, that if we seek for the meeting-place of geology and history, we shall find not a mere point or line of contact, but a series of such points, and even a complicated splicing together of different threads of investigation, which it may be difficult to disentangle, and which the geological specialist alone, or the historical specialist alone, may be unable fully to understand. The object of this little volume will be to unravel as many as possible of these threads of contact, and to make their value and meaning plain to the general reader, so that he may not, on the one hand, blindly follow mere assertions and speculations, or, on the other, fail to appreciate ascertained and weighty facts relating to this great and important matter of human origins. This is the more necessary since, even in works of some pretension, there are tendencies on the one hand to overlook geological evidence in favour of written records, or even of conjectural hypotheses, and on the other to reject all early historical testimony or tradition as valueless. We shall find that neither of these extremes is conducive to accurate conclusions. Researches of a geologico-historical character necessarily also bring us in view of the early history of our sacred books. This may be to some extent an evil, as inviting the excitement of religious controversy; but on the other hand the fact that the early history incorporated in the Bible goes back to the introduction of man, and connects this with the completion of the physical and organic preparations for his advent, has many and important uses. It would seem indeed that it is a great advantage to our Christian civilisation that our sacred books begin with a history of creation, giving an idea of order and progress in the creative work. Whether we regard the days of creation as literal days or days of vision of a seer, or whether we hold them to be days of God and His working, suitable to the Eternal One and His mighty plan, and bearing the same relation to Him that ordinary working days bear to us, we cannot escape the idea of an orderly work in time. This, while it delivers the Bible reader from the extravagant myths current among heathen peoples, ancient and modern, predisposes him to expect that something may be learned from nature as to its beginning and progress. In like manner the short statements in Genesis respecting the early history of man have awakened curiosity as to human origins, and have led us to search for further details derivable from ancient monuments. The ordinary Christian who believes his Bible is thus so far on his way toward a rational geology and archæology, and cannot say with truth that he is absolutely ignorant of the pre-human history of the earth. His notions, it is true, may be imperfect, either by reason of the brevity of the record to which he trusts, or of his own imperfect knowledge of its contents, but they give to historical and archæological